Sunset of Lantonne (28 page)

Eyes tearing up, Ishande clasped Greth’s hand and answered in a voice shaky from lack of use. “Get me away from everyone.”

Greth immediately put his arms under Ishande’s legs and arms, hoisting her. A dozen men and women—all elven—stepped into his path, trying to block him as most asked what he was doing.

“What is your way of dealing with this?” Greth snapped at Ilarra while Ishande let her head fall weakly against his neck. “What would you do right now?”

“We could only wait for her to pass,” admitted Ilarra, drawing nods from several others nearby.

“That’s not how we die,” Greth replied, though he stared at Raeln when he said it. “Is there a cellar or another way out of here?”

Ilarra pointed to a corner of the room. “There’s a cellar, but it doesn’t go outside. The only way out is through the front doors or off the roof.”

Greth started walking toward the cellar doors, shoving past any elf who got in his way. Halfway there, Raeln ran over and intercepted him, blocking his path.

“Back down, you muzzled dog,” snarled Greth, but Raeln did not move.

Ilarra got to her feet quickly, wondering if the two men were going to come to blows. Just as she thought Greth might put Ishande down and attack, it was Ishande who made the first move, gently laying a hand on Raeln’s chest. She kept it there just a moment, then weakly pushed him aside.

“I’ll go do what you can’t,” Greth told Raeln as he passed. “When I come back, I want answers to a lot of questions. Have your master answer them or I’ll beat them out of you.”

Kicking open the cellar door, Greth left with Ishande, as Ilarra followed slowly. When she neared the door, it was Raeln that stopped her.

“Raeln,” Ilarra pleaded, pointing at the open cellar door, “you know he’s going to kill her, right?”

Raeln’s eyes tightened in silent agony and he nodded, but he kept Ilarra from going past him.

Staring past her brother, Ilarra heard the light thumps of Greth’s feet on the wooden stairs end. She began to panic, trying to push past Raeln, but he grabbed her and held her firm.

“I order you to let me go,” Ilarra said without thinking.

Standing abruptly straight, Raeln released her, but stared at her with a hurt expression.

“I’m not…I didn’t mean you’re my pet…he’s wrong, Raeln,” she tried, but he shook his head and walked away, taking a place among the other warriors waiting for the undead banging at the front doors to get inside.

Unsure of herself without Raeln at her side, Ilarra hesitated but finally convinced herself to go through the cellar doors. She went down the steps slowly, then stopped as Greth stepped into the light at the bottom, resheathing a knife.

“If you came to say your goodbyes, you’re too late,” he practically spat at her. “Ishande wanted to die alone…not surrounded by gawking elves.”

“You…killed her? You really did it?”

Greth snorted. “I gave her the means to do what she wanted, and then I left her alone. It was what she wanted and it’s how our kind always die. No warrior…no wildling…wants to die slowly, while weaker people watch.”

“It’s not our way…”

“Your way is ignorant,” he told her as he came up the steps. “When the battle is over, I also expect you to burn the body…or is that also not your way?”

“It’s not.”

“It is now. If you leave her and the others intact, those undead will drag the bodies back to their masters. If I ever see Ishande come shambling up to me as a zombie, I will make sure that you and your pet die before I do.”

Greth clipped Ilarra’s shoulder hard enough she nearly fell over, but she grabbed the handrail and steadied herself. Staring down into the dark cellar, she wanted to go to Ishande, to see what Greth had allowed to happen, but she could not bring herself to take another step in that direction.

Reluctantly, Ilarra went back up the steps and found Greth standing off to one side of the main room facing Raeln. The air around them was so uncomfortable that all of the villagers—elves and wildlings alike—had moved a fair distance from the two men. Even the older wildling hunters had directed their attention anywhere but the men. Ilarra had seen much the same behavior when two hunters had fought to the death over a dispute years earlier.

“Your pet here doesn’t want to tell me what’s going on,” Greth said as Ilarra came closer, never breaking his unblinking stare at Raeln. “I want to see what’s going on outside while you two explain yourselves, so we’re going upstairs. I saw windows up there and I’m hoping we have archers already doing their jobs.”

“We should,” Ilarra told him, but he never so much as glanced at her as he spun and headed for the steps.

Feeling like a scolded child, Ilarra followed Greth up the steps with Raeln close behind.

At the top of the stairs, a group of mostly elves was already standing around the more open upper floor where Ilarra and her father lived, her father standing among them. Most of the men carried bows, but two elven men and one wildling woman carried no weapons. These she recognized as her father’s apprentices in magic. The apprentices were those that had excelled before she had even joined the classes but who had also chosen to remain in Hyeth rather than seek training in Lantonne.

“Get to the windows and kill everything that moves out there,” barked Greth as he surveyed the room, though the archers were already doing that. Focusing on the partitioned area where Ilarra’s father slept, he walked past the elves and around the dividing wall.

Ilarra hesitated in the open area, trying not to meet her father’s questioning look. She did not have the heart to tell him that not only were Rolus and Ishande dead, but that Greth had a hand in it, even if he meant well. Finally, she overcame her reluctance and followed Greth.

Once Ilarra and Raeln were both in the room, Greth shoved a sliding wall across the entrance to the small area to give them the sense of privacy. “I want answers right now as to what in all the blazing hells is going on in this village or I leave, even if it gets me killed,” Greth demanded in a low tone, obviously trying to keep his voice from carrying to the archers in the main room. “Start talking, pup.”

Raeln looked over at Ilarra, which only seemed to further sour Greth’s disposition.

“I’m not asking her,” Greth snapped as Ilarra opened her mouth to answer. “Anything she says is like finding deer shit. It catches your attention and might point toward what you’re looking for, but it’s certainly not what I want.”

Glancing between Greth and Ilarra frantically, Raeln patted his throat and shook his head.

“Don’t give me that. Answer my question.”

“He can’t talk,” Ilarra answered for Raeln, drawing an angry glare from Greth. “The bonded cannot speak. It’s part of the oath they take.”

Rolling his eyes, Greth turned back to Raeln, grabbing a handful of the taller man’s chest fur where it came out of his shirt. Using that as leverage, he pulled Raeln down so their faces were even.

“Ishande talked to me before she died. You’ll talk now. You want to keep your little promise in public…fine. I was kind enough to pull you two aside before asking questions, so do me the honor of answering me.”

Unsure if Raeln had even tried to talk in years, Ilarra saw the frustration and nervousness in her brother’s face, often glancing toward her as though he were being asked to betray her directly.

“If you can, go ahead,” Ilarra told him, touching Raeln’s arm gently. “No one but us needs to know.”

Grumbling softly, Raeln slapped aside Greth’s hand. “Ow,” said Raeln very quietly, rubbing at his chest. “Now what do you want? I’d rather this be done so I can stop breaking an oath.”

Smiling grimly, Greth leaned against the building’s wall. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Let’s start with how old you are, pup. You did some finger-waggling before, but adding isn’t something I’m great at. I’m pretty sure I got it wrong.”

“Twenty-seven.”

Greth groaned and rubbed the bridge of his long nose. “I’m four and you look my age,” he said to himself. “This is insane. My father would be shedding his fur in the afterlife if he knew I even helped slavers.”

“These people are not slavers,” Raeln answered quickly, but closed his mouth when Greth raised a hand to stop him.

“Can you choose to walk away and let her die to an angry mob if she were a horrible person who murders pups in their beds? I’m not saying she is, but she could be…elf and all.”

“No. I would die like Ishande.”

“Then you are her slave. By oath or by chains, you’re still hers. I didn’t travel halfway across Eldvar to save some Lantonnian slavers from the army of the dead. If I wanted to cuddle up with slavers, I could have stayed near Altis and been a lot safer.”

Raeln’s ears drooped slightly and he nodded. “I understand that you don’t approve,” he told Greth. “This was my choice as a child—to protect her, like my parents protected hers, and their parents before them. It’s a mutual agreement to help protect this village.”

“Mutual? What does the knife-ears give up?”

Ilarra replied for Raeln, wanting to say something harsh, but she knew it would have sounded trite. “I gave up a third of my life and much of the magic I could have learned. Any skills I learn make Raeln stronger in some fashion, though those he learns are not shared with me. If he dies, there will be no tremors or madness for me…I will die on the spot.”

That seemed to soften Greth’s expression, though only briefly. “Until we get out of here, I’ll put up with this foolishness,” he told them, shaking his head sadly. “If we can get past the undead, I’m gone and you’ll never see me again. If they kill us, it really doesn’t…”

The entire building shook and the faint conversation in the main part of the outside room turned to shouts of alert between the archers. A crackling of wood downstairs reverberated through the whole library as the building shook again.

“I thought I’d have more time to regret not killing you both,” sighed Greth, shoving aside the sliding wall. “Let’s go meet our fates. I missed my parents anyway.”

Ilarra ran out past Greth and looked for her father. He was standing near a pair of archers, who were firing endlessly out the front windows, toward the library’s entrance.

“Get everyone who can’t fight into the cellar,” her father called over his shoulder. “The doors won’t hold. Something is out there helping the undead. The zombies are throwing themselves into our arrows to keep it safe.”

With the two wildlings close behind her, Ilarra rushed to the steps and down into the main library room where the villagers were backing rapidly away from the doors. Even as Ilarra came down, the doors shook as they were struck again, this time letting in a wave of smoke and dust. The crackling of the wood mingled with the sound of fire outside.

Near the doors, all of the remaining hunters and warriors waited with raised weapons for the undead to break through. They would not have to wait long, judging by the look of the doors.

Ilarra went to the gathered villagers and began herding them toward the cellar. It took very little prodding to get the frightened people to head down the stairs. By the time the doors rumbled again, nearly every person was crowded into the large cellar, though many remained on the stairs for lack of room.

The next impact on the doors made Ilarra look back as she closed the door to the cellar, cutting off the villagers from those who were trained to fight and Ilarra herself. Trained or not, she intended to remain with Raeln until the end. Her fate was tied to his either way, so she would far rather die fighting to protect him than die alone and cowering in the basement.

Flames licked at the entry doors when Ilarra looked back toward them, seeping through large cracks that had been battered into them. The entirety of the boards creaked and bent inwards as the warriors, including Raeln and Greth, braced themselves for whatever was trying to get through. No one said anything, standing perfect still and holding their weapons ready for what came at them next.